More About Simon Ainge
Much effort and energy has gone into the decision made by Julian Rhodes to cut Bradford City season tickets from the £15 a game prices that are common in all football to the £138 they went on sale at today. Six quid a game is cheaper than the cinema and the best value in football. It is brave, it is ambitious, it is innovative and brand defining. It is everything people who work in marketing and branding would want. It deserves to work.
Rhodes cuts prices with the hope of increasing demand and nurturing an atmospherical fan base for the future. In a way Julian Rhodes is legacy building the in same areas that Geoffrey Richmond started. The Quid-a-Kid generation at Valley Parade are now the foot soldiers of our fans.
For so long Rhodes has stood alone at the helm. The Gang of Five do in some cases superb work - David Bosomworth’s dealings with the youth set up is paramount - but Jim Brown’s ability to take up the mantel of leadership above and beyond struggling with Peter Etherington for that position has been noticeable. Enter Stuart McCall.
McCall provides the leadership to push Rhodes’s plan to fruition. We are Stuart’s club again. This is a good thing and everyone sees it. The Midland Road stand - unsponsored for a year following Peter Etherington’s promises - is to be redubbed The Morrison’s Stand as the local supermarket magnet Sir Ken’s grip on the company that holds his name lessens and the board of Bradford’s biggest plc come round to the community the inhabit. Should Intersonic not want to continue then - as BfB understand it - Bradford City would play at The Morrison’s Stadium.
Sponsorship - as with bums on seats - is on the up. So is Mood.
Simon Ainge signed a new two year deal to do the job he loves and boomed
We should be expected to do well because we are a big club. We were a big club in League One so of course people will be looking at us to be up there. We obviously need some more players but with the ones we’ve got here already, I can’t see why we won’t go back up.
Stuart McCall must be pleased. Ainge has offered to play right back next term should the David Wetherall/Mark Bower partnership not be plundered. McCall himself started in the number two slot for the Bantams and the fact that Ainge joins Tom Penford, Joe Colbeck and Craig Bentham in signing contracts with the club shows a spirit of trust in the products of Bradford City.
On a Friday afternoon the mind is given to idle speculation and the mix of young players and a new serge of supporters all playing for a man who has gone from bootroom skinny to backroom manager fills the heart with anticipation and joy.
£138? I’ll be getting one.
The need for Bradford City to change focus from a club that buys to a club that produces players has been obvious at Valley Parade for some time and the fruits of that policy - first voiced by Gordon Gibb but continued through the investment in the youth set up - are becoming apprarant as the Bantams offered new deals to Tom Penford, Simon Ainge, Joe Colbeck and Craig Bentham.
The four - who all featured in David Wetherall or Colin Todd’s selections last season - are offered new deals while cohorts Joe Brown, Patrick McGuire, Nick Smith and John Swift are released.
The mystery of the stunted development of John Swift will remain at Valley Parade. Impressive in the first team on his debut under Colin Todd and a mouth on committed leader of the juniors who played well in the reserves something - and one doubts is was the performances of Richard Edghill - stood in Swift’s way.
Joe Brown’s release comes after his shined as a bright young thing but failed to nail down a place in the first team squad. Both Brown and Nick Smith are released to allow a more clear path through the ranks for seventeen year old Leon Osborne who featured in the last game of the year. Such a process - of setting a bar for the young players to beat and backing them when they do - replacing them should they not - maintains a healthy demand for continued improvement in the ranks.
Of the retained players Ainge looks ready for a place in the starting eleven next term and Bentham and Colbeck are already considered squad players. Penford has ability to spare as a succession of managers have believed and one hopes that with the exits of Marc Bridge-Wilkinson and perhaps Steven Schumacher he can turn that ability into performance.
Bridge-Wilkinson, Schumacher, Richard Edghill and Xavier Barrau are waiting for a new manager to be installed - something expected within two weeks - before being offered deal. Schumacher and Barrau are thought to be ready to sign, Edghill to be thinking over an offer from Macclesfield and Bridge-Wilkinson to be Port Vale bound.
Russell Howarth has also been released with Ben Saynor stepping up to number two goalkeeper.